Given that our methodology has different goals and techniques than those of most ESL environments, we have developed a number of tools and systems to facilitate the process. We have provided these directly to students in the past, and will now be providing them on a limited basis to online schools and tutors.
Blinktrainer tachistoscope reader to rapidly develop the ability to convert words into mental concepts and imprint grammatical requirements.
There are many websites for finding names on the Internet. But none are designed exclusively for non-native English speakers to select an English name. Many times parents or teachers will choose a name for their children and students when the child is young. But not all choose wisely; I have seen names such as "Tuna" and "News". And the names are often chosen based on the most likely initial letter based on the sound or Romanization of the student's name. Many times students will request that their native-English-speaking teachers or tutors help them choose a name. For all of these situations, we have designed a system to allow for searching by phoneme rather than letter.
Have you ever noticed that, no matter where you are or in what situation, if someone says your name, you immediately respond to it? This is because your brain is attuned to the importance of that collection of sounds. But how is that possible if your mind wasn't constantly aware of every tiny thing happening in your surroundings?
And it is. But if there weren't some filtering mechanism, you'd be overwhelmed with data. That filtering mechanism is the Reticular Activating System. It filters most things out, and only allows those things of importance through. And references to your person are always important.
But if you choose a new name for yourself, as one might using our Names system, and its used but rarely, your mind never learns that it's important. The RAS filters it out with the rest of the unimportant things.
Our RAS Tagger trains your RAS through a process of rewarding your awareness and recognition when hearing your name, first in a sequence of other names, then in a background of extraneous sounds.
We all remember the ridiculously-large spacing on the paper we used to practice handwriting as a child. Is it really appropriate to use something similar when learning a new writing system as an adult?
Of course not. One of the reasons we use such large spacing in our youth is to help develop the fine motor control necessary to write. But as an adult already writing in, perhaps, a different system, we already have trained muscles. While the movements may need to be altered and become familiar with new patterns, the boundaries are going to be fairly consistent.
Our paper generator will dynamically create handwriting practice paper with a spacing appropriate to your current handwriting habits, borders, and boundaries. This paper can be blank, or have superimposed print or cursive patterns.
In every one of Teacher Sammy's classes, the class begins with a quiz involving a portion of vocabulary, with the pronunciation and translations of the word, and a portion of sentences, written as dictation and translated.
We are offering similar functionality - A Quiz A Day - as a subscription service. These can be used directly by a student or be a component of a tutoring relationship.
Teacher Sammy has been writing about English and some of the difficulties that, particularly Mandarin-speaking, ESL students have for over a decade. Her blog now has thousands of posts.
One question we often get is: "Where do I start?"
The easy answer is: "Start with what you don't know."
In the past, that might have been seen as flippant and dismissive. But now we're making that happen. Every day, you'll be presented with a few of the example sentences from the blog. You may choose one to translate. If you are correct in your translation, you probably know that material. If not, go read the post!
One of the best methods of pushing the conscious understanding of aspects of a language down into the pattern-matching and long-term memory portions of the brain is to repeatedly mimic a recording of a native speaker saying a relevant and meaningful sentence.
But a student will often be unable to hear aspects of a sentence without repeated cycles of listening and then documenting what is happening in the sentence. For instance, students whose native tongue is a tonal language often have trouble separating stress from phrase-influenced tone or other prosody-related features of intonation.
While the mark-up used to record these features can easily be recorded on paper or on a whiteboard, it's difficult to verify or share this information.
So we're making a drag-and-drop mark-up toolkit, and using that in a system to manage the process for the use of students alone, with tutors, or with their friends.
While there are many generic and flexible keyboard libraries available on the Internet, most are either overkill or inappropriate for the simple task of easily representing pronunciation in some form of phonetic/phonemic system. So we made one! It can be incorporated into any responsive web page.